The present invention relates in general to telecommunications signaling network implementations and, in particular, to a signaling network element that serves as a signaling aggregator for use in an out-of-band signaling network.
It is well known that the use of telecommunications services is growing at unprecedented rates. Not only is usage growing rapidly, but the size of the subscriber base is also growing. This is particularly true for wireless services such as cellular telephone and personal communications system (PCS) wireless services.
As is well known, modern telephone networks employ an out-of-band signaling network for call setup and control known as xe2x80x9ccommon channel signalingxe2x80x9d (CCS). The currently most widely used implementation of common channel signaling is Signaling System 7 (SS7). The SS7 protocol was designed without comprehension of the network size or usage requirements to which the modern Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is being subjected. Consequently, parts of the PSTN are experiencing what is referred to as xe2x80x9csignaling port exhaustionxe2x80x9d. Signaling port exhaustion occurs when the capacity for connecting signaling links to a network node is consumed. Signaling port exhaustion is particularly common in wireless services networks because of rising demand for connectivity as a result of explosive subscriber growth. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that certain elements in the wireless telephone network require xe2x80x9cfully associatedxe2x80x9d signaling links. A fully associated signaling link is a direct link between two signaling elements in the network. To date, the only solution for supporting such signaling elements has been the expansion of signaling port capacity at an associated element such as a mobile switching center, which supports a plurality of base station controllers in a wireless communication network. The only alternative would be to upgrade the base station controllers to permit them to support quasi-associated signaling. This is, however, a very expensive alternative which appears to be untenable in today""s competitive telecommunications environment.
There therefore exists a need for a signaling network element that is adapted to help reduce signaling port exhaustion in an out-of-band signaling network such as a common channel signaling network to permit the signaling network to be expanded to service the needs of a growing number of telecommunications services subscribers.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a network element adapted to relieve signaling port exhaustion in an out-of-band signaling network.
The invention therefore provides a new signaling network element for aggregating signaling network traffic in a telecommunications signaling network in order to reduce signaling port exhaustion. The new network element permits an economical expansion of the network to support a larger subscriber base. The signaling network element is referred to as a Signaling Aggregator (SA). The SA is associated with one or more network nodes and mimics those nodes to the rest of the signaling network, so that network nodes incapable of quasi-associated signaling require no modification. The SA may also be provisioned to perform protocol conversions to permit elements to be connected to the signaling network that are not adapted to receive messages in the signaling protocol of the network.